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David Henry Hwang's M. Butterfly
May. 19th, 2010 11:44 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
pylduck.livejournal.comJust a quick note to mention that I saw the Guthrie Theater's production of David Henry Hwang's Tony Award-winning play M. Butterfly this evening. The play is quite wonderful live, and it definitely has held up over twenty years after its premiere. M. Butterfly is famous for being the first play by an Asian American playwright produced on Broadway. Hwang later went on to make headlines for criticizing the casting of a white actor in a Eurasian role in the musical Miss Saigon.
M. Butterfly tells the story of Rene Gallimard, a French diplomat in China who falls for an opera singer named Song Liling and carries on an affair with her for twenty years, never realizing that she is actually a man. The story, of course, is about Western perceptions of Oriental femininity. Interestingly, the story is inspired by a real-life story that is actually more complicated than the one told by Hwang. Hwang's purpose, of course, was to explore this dynamic of the white man's need to control the Asian female body/nation. The story also riffs on Puccini's opera Madame Butterfly and the iconic figure of Butterfly as a Japanese woman who kills herself out of love for a white man who has abandoned her.
The Guthrie's production was quite good. I saw Randy Reyes, the actor who played Song Liling, back in February in their production of Hwang's Yellow Face (where he played the character of David Henry Hwang in the play). Lots of people have noted that Reyes isn't "convincing" as a woman, but I think that having the role played this way doesn't really detract from the play's point--in fact, it strengthens it by making it obvious to the audience that Song is not a woman despite Gallimard's repeated refusals to acknowledge evidence to the contrary. The staging of the play was great, too. The stage was mostly bare, but moveable set pieces would roll out from the back or from under the stage. And the opera scenes took place on a balcony level in the back.
M. Butterfly tells the story of Rene Gallimard, a French diplomat in China who falls for an opera singer named Song Liling and carries on an affair with her for twenty years, never realizing that she is actually a man. The story, of course, is about Western perceptions of Oriental femininity. Interestingly, the story is inspired by a real-life story that is actually more complicated than the one told by Hwang. Hwang's purpose, of course, was to explore this dynamic of the white man's need to control the Asian female body/nation. The story also riffs on Puccini's opera Madame Butterfly and the iconic figure of Butterfly as a Japanese woman who kills herself out of love for a white man who has abandoned her.
The Guthrie's production was quite good. I saw Randy Reyes, the actor who played Song Liling, back in February in their production of Hwang's Yellow Face (where he played the character of David Henry Hwang in the play). Lots of people have noted that Reyes isn't "convincing" as a woman, but I think that having the role played this way doesn't really detract from the play's point--in fact, it strengthens it by making it obvious to the audience that Song is not a woman despite Gallimard's repeated refusals to acknowledge evidence to the contrary. The staging of the play was great, too. The stage was mostly bare, but moveable set pieces would roll out from the back or from under the stage. And the opera scenes took place on a balcony level in the back.
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